What We Will Do
While looking at the conversion of historical ecosystems is valuable, we can perform more analyses by comparing amounts historical succession classes to current. This gives us a broad measure of the changes in vegetation structure for ecosystems.
What are “Succession Classes?”
In general LANDFIRE succession classes are stages of development defined in the descriptions of each Biophysical Setting. They are characterized by vegetation height, canopy cover and to some degree species composition. Key takeaways:
- To learn what the succession classes are for each Biophysical Setting, look to the corresponding description on http://landfirereview.org/test/search.php
- LANDFIRE used state and transition models to estimate the amount of each succession class that would occur with natural (pre-European colonization) disturbance regimes. Historical succession classes were not mapped as they were assumed to move around over time.
- The Succession Class dataset maps the current location of succession classes, agricultural/developed land-use classes, and uncharacteristic vegetation. Uncharacteristic typically represents exotic vegetation, or vegetation structure that would not have occurred historically.
- By comparing the amounts of historical and current succession classes you can get a sense of which classes are over/under represented. This assumes that the landscape you are assessing is large enough to potentially include the full compliment of succession classes.
Our Sample Ecosystem
First, let’s take another look at our sClass GIS map for some visual context:
